Invention of Air Conditioning
How one drawing became an industry.
A Different World, Before 1902
The World Before Cool
For most of human history the weather set the terms. Summer closed theaters, slowed factories and cost working days. A hot night was simply a night you did not sleep.
Innovation, November 1881
Slide Rule
Patented in 1881 and manufactured by Keuffel & Esser, Willis Carrier's circular slide rule held a series of scales on a central cylinder; aligned carefully, it delivered the precision of a modern calculator. Carrier used it to calculate dew point control, the breakthrough at the foundation of modern air conditioning.
Innovation, Spring 1902
Lyle's bet
A consulting engineer walked into J. Irvine Lyle's Manhattan office with a client's problem. Humidity at a Brooklyn printing plant was ruining the color register on fine multicolor work, and Judge magazine's schedule was at risk.
Engineers could already heat, cool and humidify air, yet controlling humidity precisely in a factory was something no one had done before. Lyle took the job and gave it to Willis Carrier, a Cornell graduate one year out of school. He was 25 years old.
Innovation, July 1902
When was air conditioning invented? The origin of the air conditioner.
Willis Carrier starts the engine driving the world's first modern air conditioning system, installed in the summer of 1902 at the Sackett & Wilhelms printing plant in Brooklyn, New York. This artist's conceptualization appeared in the August 1954 edition of Steelways magazine, which noted that thanks to Carrier, "air conditioning spread through the industry like a cool breeze."
On July 17, 1902, Willis Haviland Carrier designed the first modern air-conditioning system, launching an industry that would fundamentally improve the way we live, work and play.
October 1903
The Bet Pays Off
On October 21, 1903, Lyle wrote to his home office that "the cooling coils which we sold this company have given excellent results during the past summer." His faith in the opportunity, and in the young engineer who had directed the project, was confirmed.
The "Apparatus for Treating Air"
Willis Carrier applied for a patent on his invention, an "Apparatus for Treating Air." Patent No. 808897 was issued on January 2, 1906. It was the world's first spray-type air conditioning equipment, able to wash air and either humidify or dehumidify it: the fundamental building block of modern air conditioning.
What is "conditioning" of air?
Not cooling. Conditioning: washing, drying or humidifying air to a specification. Temperature was one variable among several. Control was the product.
Was it just a paper jam?
Not quite. Humid air made the paper swell between passes, so the colors came out misaligned. Willis Carrier worked out that the fix was controlling the moisture in the room, not the machine. The rest of the century followed from that.
Carrier Beginnings
Seven Engineers. One Vision. A Century of Innovation.
On June 26, 1915, Carrier Engineering Corporation was incorporated, with Willis Carrier as president, Lyle as treasurer and general manager, and five hand-picked colleagues. Seven young men scraped together $32,600 in capital and set out, through an economic slump and a world war, to build a brand-new industry.
A group portrait of Buffalo Forge Company engineers includes Willis Carrier (bottom row, third from right) and his future business partner, J. Irvine Lyle (middle row, sixth from left). Carrier, Lyle and five colleagues would launch Carrier Engineering Corporation as an independent company in 1915.
The Inspiration
Invention with a Different Intention
Cooling was never the goal. Control was. Everything that followed, from the cold chain to the clean room to the data center, came out of that distinction.
1903-1914: The Launch of Carrier® Air Conditioning of America
1915 - 1921: Manufactured Weather
1922 - 1929: Beyond the Factory
1930 - 1940: Weathermakers to the World
1941 - 1950: Distinguished Service
1951 - 1978: Growing With the Baby Boomers
1979 - 1993: Expanded Global Reach
1994 - Present: Natural Leadership
A name that launched an industry
Weathermakers to the World
Willis Carrier's life is a study in tenacity and intelligent problem-solving: taking everything that came before him, improving on it, and making something entirely new.
See how a young man from Western New York created one of the most important inventions of the 20th century.
More to the story:
History is filled with stories of ingenious people who tried to stay cool before the invention of modern air conditioning. In some warm weather regions of the world, residents constructed homes of thick limestone to reduce indoor heat. In 3000 B.C., an Assyrian merchant devised an evaporative cooler by spraying water on the walls of the basement below his courtyard. Leonardo da Vinci designed a water-driven fan to cool his patron's bedroom while Sir Christopher Wren constructed a gravity exhaust ventilating system for England's House of Parliament. More recently, architects have provided us cooling ideas such as the transom, awning, and sleeping porch. And in every culture, those who could travel to escape the heat sought relief at the shore and in the mountains.
However, not until 1902, when Willis Carrier invented his system of modern air conditioning, would factories and homes be able to provide cool, dry interiors in steamy, hot weather.
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Willis Carrier designed the first modern air-conditioning system in 1902 to solve a production problem at the Sackett & Wilhelms printing plant in Brooklyn, New York. Paper used in the company's multi-color printing presses was plagued by changes in humidity, causing the misalignment of colors and wavy edges that jammed feeding mechanisms, and slowing the drying of ink. Carrier's solution, which focused on controlling humidity, would launch an industry and fundamentally improve the way we live, work, and play.
Willis Carrier designed the first modern air-conditioning system in 1902 to solve a production problem at the Sackett & Wilhelms printing plant in Brooklyn, New York. Paper used in the company's multi-color printing presses was plagued by changes in humidity, causing the misalignment of colors and wavy edges that jammed feeding mechanisms, and slowing the drying of ink. Carrier's solution, which focused on controlling humidity, would launch an industry and fundamentally improve the way we live, work, and play.
At the Sackett & Wilhelms Lithography and Printing Company in Brooklyn, New York, late in the summer of 1902. Chilled coils, fans, ducts, heaters and humidification pipes held the plant at a constant 55 percent humidity year-round -- the equivalent cooling effect of melting 108,000 pounds of ice a day. A year later, Carrier's colleague J. Irvine Lyle reported the coils had "given excellent results during the past summer.
Willis Carrier's first modern air conditioning installation was designed to reduce humidity on the second floor of Sackett & Wilhelms' print shop, a space designed to hold 60 multicolor printing presses. Carrier targeted 70°F and 55% humidity in winter and 80°F and 55% humidity in summer. The air-cooling equipment was added to an existing hot-blast heating system previously installed by Buffalo Forge.
For humidification in the winter, 1¼” perforated steam pipes were placed at the base of each of the warm air risers and controlled by Johnson Temperature Regulating Co. humidistats. For cooling and dehumidifying, two sets of prime-surface pipe coils were placed on the inlet side of the fan, selected for a total cooling load of 60 tons.
The equipment for the first modern air conditioning installation included coils, fans, ducts, heaters, perforated steam pipes and temperature controls. Cooling water was drawn from an artesian well in the summer of 1902, supplemented by a De La Vergne ammonia compressor in the spring of 1903.
We don't know the price of all the earliest air-conditioning installations but do have some examples. A Carrier system designed in 1907 for Huguet Silk Company's weaving plant in Wayland, New York, for example, was delivered for $3,100, or about $90,000 in today's dollars.
A Fortune magazine article in 1938 noted that air-conditioning had split to become a capital goods industry and a consumer industry. A “central station” conditioning system intended to cool an entire building might cost more than $1 million for a large plant or store and as little as $1,500 for a small house — about $29,000 in today's dollars. New consumer appliances, built to cool just one room, might cost as low as $400 ($7,700 in 2021 dollars) in the 1930s — still beyond the means of most middle-class homeowners.
In May 1906, industrial engineer Stuart W. Cramer addressed a meeting of the American Cotton Manufacturers Association in Asheville, North Carolina, where he coined the term “air conditioning.” Cramer had begun humidifying or “yarn conditioning” the air inside textile mills in 1895 as a way to keep threads moist and cloth pliant.
The new practice of “air conditioning” had expanded features over yarn conditioning, including ventilation, cleanliness, and dehumidification. Not long after, Carrier and his engineers began using the term “air conditioning,” which became universally adopted. “The one and only time I met Mr. Cramer and had a chance to visit with him,” Willis later wrote, “was when we were on a train. I found him to be a fine Southern gentleman.”
Willis Carrier presented his Rational Psychrometric Formulae on December 8, 1911 at the annual meeting of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers. It provided the first mathematical method of psychrometric calculation — precisely relating temperature and humidity — and soon became the authoritative standard. Along with this paper, Carrier also presented Air Conditioning Apparatus—Principles Governing Its Application and Operation, a comprehensive discussion of humidifying and dehumidifying apparatus and automatic controls.
His invitation to present at the meeting was recognition that air conditioning had become an established industry and new branch of engineering. Carrier's psychrometric chart would be reproduced in college textbooks, taught in engineering schools, and translated into foreign languages. At 35 years old, Willis Carrier had become internationally recognized as the Father of Air Conditioning.
An air conditioner provides cool, dry air to an interior space by removing heat and moisture and transferring it outside. From its founding in the early 20th century, Carrier defined air conditioning as four essential and inseparable factors: the control of air temperature, humidity, cleanliness, and distribution.
Today's Carrier believes that air conditioning can also play a critical role in building health and occupant safety and productivity.